Skill Luck

When the variously disabled

Brothers adoption threw together

Were young, their scattered backgrounds ensured

That, as far as sports went, they would root

For teams based in different cities.

These rooting interests slowly hardened

Into the boys’ proxy rivalries,

Crowing over victories, boasting

Of more to come, excusing defeats,

All nothing to do with them, in sports

They never had opportunity

To play, even against each other.

One brother in particular took

Such personal pride in victories,

Such personal umbrage at defeats,

He would get into shouting matches,

Becoming wildly irrational,

Insisting all the accomplishments

Of teams he supported were pure skill,

But those of the teams his brothers cheered

Came from nothing but undeserved luck.

As his brothers loudly argued back,

His position would shrink to two words

He would scream over their shouts—Skill! Luck!

These days, half a century later,

One of the brothers still hears that yell

In the rhetoric of opinions

About growing inequalities

And the merits of the successful,

The disasters of the dispossessed,

All skill, defending the successful,

Just luck, defending those dispossessed,

And then reversed, of course, on offense.

But what of the disabled brothers,

How did the long game play out for them?

No wealth yet, nor death. Cancers, strokes, debts.